If you are having a similar issue I suggest you read through this thread to make sure you have the same issue as I did. Throughout the thread there are two working solutions; one that requires a win7 repair disk and one that can all be done from the linux terminal.

Thanks to darkod I was pointed to this link which fixed my problem in a very easy step by step manner.

I'm currently dual booting windows and linux.
When i first installed ubuntu (after windows 7) everything worked fine except I accidentally installed the boot files to my usb flash drive for ubuntu,
The only way i could boot ubuntu was to push f10 while my pc was starting up and select boot from my usb drive.
So i started the process of trying to get a grub menu when my pc powered on.
Now i got my grub working but the menu never popped up. So I used the repair tool and now a grub menu appears. However, it wont display a windows partition!
Here is the URL the repair tool gave me.

Re: I can't boot windows after installing ubuntu

I've tried update-grub. I already got the grub menu to display using the repair-tool. So that isn't my issue. My issue is that in the grub menu there is no windows boot. only 2 ubuntu option and a previous ubuntu version option.

Just trying to track down the issue so that I can ask the question or search forums for the right topic: Is there a way to verify that my windows 7 boot is still intact? Or is that part of the results you had me post above?

If my windows 7 boot is still intact I won't need a recovery disk, correct?

and if it's not this is going to be much more complicated?

I've been browsing forums but I'm scared to try things because I dont want to mess my system up worst.

Re: I can't boot windows after installing ubuntu

Originally Posted by rocktheartsm4l

I've tried update-grub. I already got the grub menu to display using the repair-tool. So that isn't my issue. My issue is that in the grub menu there is no windows boot. only 2 ubuntu option and a previous ubuntu version option.

Just trying to track down the issue so that I can ask the question or search forums for the right topic: Is there a way to verify that my windows 7 boot is still intact? Or is that part of the results you had me post above?

If my windows 7 boot is still intact I won't need a recovery disk, correct?

and if it's not this is going to be much more complicated?

I've been browsing forums but I'm scared to try things because I dont want to mess my system up worst.

Run update-grub, then use the solution I linked to get the GRUB menu appear at boot.

Re: I can't boot windows after installing ubuntu

Originally Posted by Bufeu

Run update-grub, then use the solution I linked to get the GRUB menu appear at boot.

As I just stated. My issue is not getting the grub menu to run at boot. It does. When i start my computer the grub menu pops up. I get the options: Ubuntu, Ubuntu (recovery), and previous versions of ubuntu. There is no option to run windows 7. I can run update-grub all day and nothing is going to change.

and by the way thank you for trying to help me I really appreciate this.

Re: I can't boot windows after installing ubuntu

Originally Posted by rocktheartsm4l

As I just stated. My issue is not getting the grub menu to run at boot. It does. When i start my computer the grub menu pops up. I get the options: Ubuntu, Ubuntu (recovery), and previous versions of ubuntu. There is no option to run windows 7. I can run update-grub all day and nothing is going to change.

and by the way thank you for trying to help me I really appreciate this.

Hmm... so there's no different after running grub-update? Strange.... According to your outputs, Ubuntu finds the Windows partitions, so GRUB should do the same. Can you mount the Windows partition?

Re: I can't boot windows after installing ubuntu

I looks to me that something has overwritten essential boot files that are usually in the first partition of Win 7 installations. ( see: pastbin link /dev/sda1) which shows grub legacy there. So grub-prober does not see the files it is looking for to make a proper entry for win7

I think that you will need to repair the windows boot files, then probably reinstall grub into the mbr of your drive.

Sorry I do not run win7 or 8 so I can't be much help with fixing there.

Last edited by arpanaut; February 11th, 2013 at 10:32 PM.
Reason: added some

I noticed as I was looking at the outputs you asked me for a comment that said, the grub boot menu was easy to edit. Do you think I need to add the option to boot from my windows partition to the menu? and if so how would I go about doing this?